For years, the accepted pioneer of the digital age was the ENIAC, short for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, perhaps because the story associated with improvement was one worthy for tabloids and tv.

As World War II was coming to a close, the Army had run in need of mathematicians and were willing to recruit women. Six women were accepted efficient on “Project PX” at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering, under John Mauchly and S. Presper Eckert. The women’s job would have program firing tables and ballistic trajectories using ENIAC. Their work laid the groundwork for computer programming. The completed machine was unveiled on Feb. 14, 1946 at the University of Pennsylvania. Within the armed forces had funded diet plans almost $500,000. It occupied about 1,800 square feet and used about 18,000 vacuum tubes, weighing almost 50 tons. It is widely considered to function as first computer invented, considering its highly functional status through the late 1950s.

However, its “first” status was challenged in court when Rand Corp. bought the ENIAC patent and started charging royalties. Honeywell Corporation. refused to pay and challenged the patent in 1968. It was learned that Mauchly, among the leaders of the Project PX in the University of Pennsylvania, had seen early prototype of a device being built at the Iowa State College called the Atanasoff-Berry Computer.

Professor John Vincent Atanasoff and graduate student Cliff Berry began development close to the ABC in 1937 and it always been developed until 1942 at the Iowa State College (now Iowa State University). Eventually, it could solve equations containing 29 variables.

In 1973, You.S. Federal Judge Earl R. Larson released his decision how the ENIAC patent by Mauchly and Eckert was invalid along with the ABC was actually the first computer devised. However, the ABC was never fully functional, so the best selling opinion to equipment has the ENIAC as the first electronic computing appliance. The Smithsonian Institute’s Museum of American History in Washington displays most from the remains of the ENIAC, alongside bits of the ABC.

However, there’s another twist to this tale. The most rudimentary computer is an electronic device designed to just accept data, perform prescribed mathematical and logical operations and display the results. Germany’s Konrad Zuse created what to do with an invention idea was essentially the first programmable calculator in the mid-1930s in his parent’s living room. Zuse’s Z1 had 64-word memory and a clock speed of 1 Hz. Programming the the Z1 required the user to insert tape into a punch tape reader and then receive his results any punch tape dispenser – making it possibly the first computer invented.